Remember that our performance will be in the larger room, Lincoln Hall B21. I will be there setting up starting at 2:40. Feel free to come early and put your files on the computer or, in the case of the first group, get setup. See you this week.

1.) Arrays as indexed storage containers for values. Use the slider to scrub through the arrays and see the values. Or hit the green “toggle” to start the metronome and counter.
–> We used this patch in class to send MIDI notes to Live.

2.) Arrays can be used to load soundfiles using [soundfiler]. As before, they are simply storing numbers, here the individual samples / amplitude values of the loaded soundfile.
–> This patch contains multiple methods for playing the array / soundfile, starting with [tabplay~], which simply plays the array from beginning to end (or with a message telling it to start at a sample and play for a number of samples. The [line~] player in the lower right is similar, using a line / ramp to read through the array.
–> Be sure to turn up the volume on whichever part of the patch you are playing with
–> The last player, “loopplayer” uses a [phasor~] or sawtooth wave to read through the array. We discussed this in class.

3.) I showed several examples of ways of using arrays, including a “Beat Slicer”, cutting the file into segments and then randomly playing those segments. Here are three version, one that uses a random number generator, [random], and the other two that specify the slice / segment to be played using either another array (amen_sequencer/”MAIN-MIDIarray.pd”) OR a set of Radio buttons (amen_sequencer/”MAIN-radiobuttons.pd”).

For those of you looking for more information, here are a number of useful resources. The first is the PD help browser, found in the “Help” menu within the application. The second (very useful!!) is the PD FLOSS Manual, found here. The third is a set of very thorough tutorials by Alexandre Porres, found here. And the last is this video series on YouTube by Dr. Rafael Hernandez.

I wanted to share the patch as we left off with it today. I added two things after you left that might be instructive:

The [loadbang] object I mentioned, here turning on PD’s DSP from within the patch whenever the patch is opened. The message “pd dsp 1” tells PD to turn on DSP. “pd dsp 0” would turn it off.

You will note a dark background color. This is a “Put” menu object we have not yet used, the “canvas”. It is nothing more than a blank box of color that can be resized to fit the dimensions of your patch. It has “Properties” like all other graphical objects, accessed by right-clicking its upper left corner.

Ring Modulation interface from class, March 13, 2018. Note the included “etude” called “ringmod1.wav” that I made from the patch, just a quick performance using the simple means we built together.

You might enjoy playing with this “Online composer” for the Federation Bells in Melbourne Australia. The downloadable version, called the “bell sample player” is just a Max/MSP patch that is purpose-built for the bells, including the samples as well as spatial information taken from the locations of the bells in the field in Melbourne.

There is also an Abelton sampler, but in my experience it does require some adjustments to the envelopes to sound good.